The perfect content creator

Part II. The Perfect Lifestyle Blogger

Hello, everyone! destream is here and we’re continuing our series of articles about what skills a perfect content creator should possess to achieve success in their career.

Our second article will be about lifestyle blogging — one of today’s most trendy ways of content creation. By the way, if you want to read the first article, click here (it’s about live-streaming). Let’s go!

THE SKILLS

As we did in the previous article, we’ll start with a list of needed skills, and then talk about each of them separately.

The list includes:

1. Video & Photography: lifestyle blogging is a visual medium, so it’s essential to have a good eye for photography and video, as well as the ability to edit and enhance your visuals to make them stand out.
2. SMM: social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and others are essential tools for promoting your blog and building an audience. You should have a good understanding of how to use these platforms effectively to build your brand, engage with followers, and promote your content.
3. Networking: establishing meaningful connections among like-minded individuals and collaborating with other content creators and influencers can help you grow your audience and reach new audiences… more than in almost any other field of digital content creation.
4. Organizational skills: in general, being a lifestyle blogger means showing people bright and beautiful parts of our everyday lives: constant trips, sports, education, interesting events, and other activities demand a large portion of organizational skills… you must be able to efficiently organize and carry them out, otherwise, the endless routine will swallow you up.
5. Storytelling: as a lifestyle blogger, you’re not just sharing information, you’re sharing your personal experiences, thoughts, and emotions. Applying storytelling techniques can help you convey your message in a way that’s relatable, engaging, and memorable. It’ll help you create a deep connection with the audience.

Put in some time effort, and dedication (which is the most important) and you’ll see that lifestyle blogging is something you’ve always wanted to do. You just didn’t know about it.

VIDEO & PHOTOGRAPHY

Here are the steps you can take to obtain video & photography skills:

• Learn the basics: start by learning the basic principles of photography and videography, such as lighting, composition, and color theory. You can find free online courses and tutorials on websites such as YouTube, Skillshare, or Linkedin Learning. It won’t take long, but the impact will be really strong, just believe us.
• Practice regularly: take as many photos and videos as you can, and practice different techniques to develop your skills. Experiment with different camera settings, angles, lighting, and perspectives.
• Invest in good equipment: invest in a good quality camera, lenses, and other equipment that fit your budget. You don’t need the most expensive gear to produce high-quality content, but having the right equipment will sure make a difference.
• Learn from others: look for inspiration from other content creators in your niche, find the people whose works you like the most, and study their methods to see what techniques and styles they use.
• Use editing: learn and use editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, or Premiere to enhance your photos and videos (knowledge from open sources will be enough). It’ll help you improve the overall quality of content and bring your vision to life. Plus, editing is one of the best ways of creating your own, unique content style.
• Seek feedback: always ask for honest feedback on the photos and videos you make. Friends, family, and peer-creators are the best source of constructive critics. This will help you identify areas for improvement and set the right steps to achieve the next level of skills development.

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT

Now let’s get to the steps you can take to raise the level of your SMM skills:

• Choose the right platforms: this includes Identifying which social media your target audience uses the most and focusing on building a strong presence there. The main thing is to understand how the algorithms work in each of them and what type of posts are the best.
• Keep up with the trends: social media is an inseparable part of our lives that constantly changes, so it’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest trends, features, and algorithm changes to not end up doing the ice-bucket challenge in 2023.
• Engage with peers and the audience: respond to comments, messages, and mentions from your followers. Engage with other content creators and influencers in your niche, participate in conversations related to your content, make giveaways, hold content-sharing & other contests, and so on.
• Create shareable content: the secret of successful SM management lies in creating eye-catching, informative, and trendy content that people will like to share among others. To make your materials shareable, use hashtags, captions, appealing visuals, storytelling, and keywords to make it easier for people to discover and share your content.
• Analyze your metrics: use social media analytics tools to track your metrics such as engagement, reach, and follower growth. This can help you identify what content works best and adjust your strategy accordingly.

NETWORKING

Next, we’ll discuss what you can do to become better at networking & collaboration:

• Attend events and conferences: attend as many events related to your niche as possible. There you should establish meaningful connections with other bloggers and influencers, so make sure you’ve invested in your travel to various events and conferences. In the end, attending such places is a great source of content.
• Collaborate with other creators: the Internet LOVES collaborations (especially among popular people). Creating joint content with other lifestyle bloggers from your niche can help you reach new audiences and grow your following. Look for opportunities to collaborate on content, giveaways, or other projects.
• Participate in online communities: join online communities related to your niche, such as Facebook groups, Telegram chats, or subreddits. Don’t be shy to participate in conversations, ask questions, offer value, and build relationships with other members.
• Reach out to brands: delete the “my reach is too small” and “they probably won’t accept” phrases from your vocabulary and just start reaching out to brands as soon as you acquire your first audience. There are many ways of working with brands such as proposing a collaboration, offering to review their products in exchange for exposure, being an ambassador, making native ads, and so on.
• Provide value: Offer value to your network by sharing your knowledge, expertise, or resources. This is the main thing that helps to establish yourself as a valuable member of the community, gain respect, and increase visibility.

ORGANIZATIONAL SKILLS

The fourth point is organizational skills. Let’s dive deeper into mastering it:

• Always have a schedule: set aside specific times for each of your activities. This may seem redundant in some cases, but don’t let that false feeling of redundancy fool you. A habit of having a schedule for every working occasion will save you tons of time and money… believe us, the higher goes your career, the stronger will be its impact.
• Use efficient financial tools: using the right donation platform (for tips from viewers) or payment ecosystem (for brands and direct payments) is very important. It saves a lot of time and effort and lets you concentrate on making content instead of carrying out many minor financial issues like commission, fees, transaction capabilities, problems with banks, and so on. When choosing, pay attention to the versatility, reliability, security, commissions, and additional features. Of course, we advise you to choose our platform — destream, as it successfully meets all the criteria above. You can easily check it here.
• Use a task management system: utilize a task management system, such as Trello, Asana, or Google Tasks, to organize your to-do lists and prioritize your (and other people’s) tasks. This will especially come in handy when you’ll have A TEAM of people working on your content.
• Use templates: start forming and using templates such as outlines, checklists, short guidelines, intros, outros, “where to put an ad”, and others to streamline your and your team’s workflow, save masses of time, and make sure everyone’s work is synchronized with others.
• Automate repetitive tasks: this point is closely related to the previous one. Use tools like Hootsuite or Buffer to automate social media posting and save time, Mailchimp or ConvertKit to automate email sending, Google Analytics to track your website, Amazon Associates or ShareASale to track your affiliate marketing, and so on. Automation is the key to saving time on the most boring tasks.

STORYTELLING

And the last but not least point on our skill list is writing, and here are the steps for obtaining it:

• Learn to always start with a hook: a good story starts with a hook that grabs the viewer’s/reader’s attention. Use an opening sentence or paragraph that draws your audience in and makes them want to keep reading. To possess this skill, start by reading about various models of story structures and then applying them when creating content.
• Read widely: reading books, blogs, and other content in your niche can help you develop a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t. It can also inspire you to share your stories in a new and unique way.
• Focus on the details: the details are what bring a story to life. The secret is, every time you feel bright emotions (no matter good or bad), concentrate on that feeling and determine exactly where it comes from (focus on the sensory details). Once you’ve pinpointed the source of your feelings (view, sound, smell, taste, etc.), use descriptive language to paint a picture for the audience.
• Be authentic: authenticity is crucial for good storytelling. Share your own experiences and emotions, and be honest about your thoughts, opinions, and feelings. The audience will appreciate your honesty and connect with you on a deeper level.
• Practice: the more you practice storytelling, the better you’ll become. Look for opportunities to tell stories in your daily life, whether it’s through social media posts, blog articles (why not?), or conversations with friends and family.

And here the second article in “the perfect content creator” series comes to an end. Some of these skills can feel quite hard to possess, but if you love what you do, there’ll be no obstacles you can’t overcome.

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Have a good day and stay creative!